Greetings from The Great OCM!!!
A cram packed week full of awesome stories, let me name a few:
First
off the weather has been crazy! Rain one day, snow another (flurries).
The weather in the morning now is much colder, always near freezing and
during the day it is in the 50's usually. However, it is a completely
different kind of cold because it is still humid. It cuts right through
your clothes and is what people around here call "a bone chilling cold"
Luckily we have a car because I still need to obtain some winter
clothes for Ohio.
Alright probably one of the top stories of the day is
that we were out of power for 2 days. One morning we woke up and the
power was out but we recognized that none of our neighbors had lost
their power. While looking for the reason why we noticed that our
electricity meter in the back of our apartment was missing, just up and
gone. There was just a big hole in the wall where it should have been.
Now I still don't know why someone would want to steal a meter but
apparently someone did because it wasn't there. Anyways this happend on
Saturday night sometime and the office for our apartment complex was
closed till today (Monday). We asked our neighbor for an emergency
number and he gave us one, but it simply told us to call our electric
company. The only problem was we didn't know who our electric company
was. We eventually got the number from our neighbor and last night we
had power restored. It was a very rough 2 days though. We lost almost
all of our food because the fridge didn't work and it was warm outside
that one day. Luckily we have a gas stove so we were able to cook what
we had.
It has been a great week of improvement here in the Big
Walnut Creek area. I would briefly like to share one miracle, or a
series of miracles that made up our day yesterday. We had a weekly goal
to find 4 new investigators and it was the last day of the week so we
set a daily goal for 3. I knew that it would take a lot of faith to find
so many in one day so during church I focused on strengthening my faith
to find. We returned from church and began. At first almost all of our
potentials fell through and it looked bleak. Elder Hatch then had an
impression that we needed to knock on the door of a certain home, but no
one answered. However, the Lord does work in mysterious ways. On our way
back to our car we crossed paths with a young man whom we began
teaching. He invited us to his home and he wants us to come back and
teach his family! (miracle number one). After everything else fell
through we decided to go finding on a street we picked out while
planning the night before. We found another new investigator and 2
potential investigators while finding, which was unusally productive for
knocking on doors (miracle number 2). We decided we would then try to
contact a former potential investigator before ending the night. He was
home along with his wife. They let us into their home and we were able
to teach and they invited us back into their home. (miracle number
three). Overall I learned that I need to strengthen my faith to find and
when I have this faith, the Lord provides finding opportunites because He knows that we are willing to seize those opportunities.
My favorite lesson to teach is lesson 3 which is The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and one of the first points is Faith. Faith is
the fuel that runs Christ's church and all its members. Nothing happens
until we first have faith and by faith I mean really believe that the
Lord will answer your prayers and you plan accordingly. You promise to
do your part and you have faith that the Lord will provide that which
you lack. It is possible to spend an enitire lifetime and more studying
the principle of Faith, which is the first principle of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ.
This was my first normal Sunday because last week was
stake conference. I was finally to meet the ward which is very small. We
meet at a stake center and only half of the bench seats are filled.
But, while at church I came up with a vision for my area and that is to
fill those empty seats, maybe not while I am there, but I would love to
see the day when the seats are full and even the overflow opened. Vision and faith, that is what drives a missionary.
Well that was my week in a nut shell
I
love you all and hope you have a wonderful week. Remeber to hold to the
rod of iron which is the word of God, and if you do, nothing will be
able to stand in your way. Sometimes we are in the middle of the mist of
darkness and we can't see what is in front of us. But we have the rod,
we know where the rod is leading us, and that is all we need.
Love,
Elder Beutler
